IDEA: Linux kernel and pcbios compatibility...

Greg Watson gwatson at lanl.gov
Fri Dec 19 14:39:01 CET 2003


At 11:20 AM -0700 12/19/03, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>Stefan Reinauer <stepan at suse.de> writes:
>
>>  * Eric W. Biederman <ebiederman at lnxi.com> [031219 01:36]:
>>  >
>>  > Brainstorming earlier today I think I have found a way to use
>>  > an linux kernel for the boot loader and to implement pcbios
>>  > compatibility without too much cost.   The idea is to use
>>  > a uclinux kernel.  And implement a ``user space'' aplication
>>  > that is a user space shim that makes kernel calls.
>>
>>  What functionality is it exactly that we need the uclinux
>>  kernel for? We won't do any scheduling, and we won't need source code
>>  drivers if we implement a pcbios "emulation"
>>  What I liked most about the LinuxBIOS2 approach is that
>>  code was only introduced in the tree when it was specifically needed.
>>
>>  Since I had my hands at the Alpha bootloader Milo, everything that uses
>>  a Linux kernel for it's operations kind of scares me...
>
>So this is for the bootloader, the payload and it will be optional.
>This will not go into the linuxBIOS tree, this is an alternative to
>etherboot.  
>

I would like to see this from the PPC perspective. Since neither filo 
nor etherboot work on PPC, this might be a good way of booting from, 
say, a disk. Which would be nice.

Greg



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